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Where We Work : India

India is home to, arguably, the best food in the world. It’s the second most populous nation in the world with more than 1 billion people. Proud of its ability to maintain unity amid diversity, this country has more than 300 tribes speaking some 1,600 languages and dialects.

Today India ranks among the top 10 industrial nations in the world. Yet because its population is growing as fast as the economy, the Indian people have one of the world’s lowest per-capita incomes. Approximately 70 percent of Indians depend on agriculture to earn a living, but drought or a poor harvest can lead farmers from home in search of other opportunities. India also suffers from a low rate of literacy—especially among its female population. Approximately one in three adult females in India is literate and only 40 percent of secondary school-age girls are enrolled in formal education.

Projects

Stopping Trafficking in India

Currently, there are an estimated 500,000 minor girls in forced prostitution in India. These girls are tricked by false promises of a good job or sold by a relative into a brothel and then held as sexual slaves, who are then coerced into sex with many clients each day.

Deeply wounded, these girls need counseling and a strong support network to avoid returning to prostitution. Uneducated and often considered ineligible for marriage because of their sexual exploitation, rescued girls are in desperate need of basic education, medical care, and vocational training.

Read Karishma’s story

Partner

Tearfund’s local partner in India is Freedom Firm. Freedom Firm is a Christian organisation dedicated to the liberation of children enslaved in commercial sexual exploitation, to their effective rehabilitation, and to justice against those who have profited from their misery.

Rescue

Freedom Firm deploys a team of undercover investigators who follow leads and monitor red light areas in Maharashtra and Karnataka, which are two states in central India that have a high incidence of sex trafficking.

Using hidden cameras, our investigators identify the minor victims as well as the brothel keepers, pimps, and traffickers, document the crime, and then submit this information to the police. With assistance from Freedom Firm, the police raid the brothels and rescue the girls, who are then placed in aftercare. The police arrest the perpetrators and file criminal complaints against them.

Restoration

After rescue, each girl is placed in a local government observation home pending an inquiry into her background and family condition. Freedom Firm’s Regional Aftercare Program has a team of social workers who closely follow each rescued girl as she moves through the government process and beyond. The social workers provide ongoing counseling and facilitate medical care, education, and certified training programs, thus ensuring that each girl is given the tools she needs for a life of self-worth and self-reliance outside of prostitution.

Justice

Freedom Firm is fervently fighting to create systemic change in India through the consistent application of the laws against trafficking. Our lawyers monitor each case closely, help prepare counsel and witnesses, and assist at trial. We pursue each case through the judicial process until a verdict is reached. Rescued girls testify against their perpetrators and help bring them to the final step of achieving justice. This justice not only brings healing to the victims but it also acts as a detterent, in that it increases the cost of trafficking, which is an important step in eliminating child prostitution in India.

Get involved

• Pray. Subscribe to Tearfund Ireland’s regular e-zine here and get real-time prayer updates from Freedom Firm
• Give. You can financially support the life-saving work of Freedom Firm here. Tearfund Ireland is tax-exempt so your donation to Freedom Firm will go further.

Projects

Project Impact - 2010

Project dates: Jan – Dec 2010

Partner – IMCARES. They have been a Tearfund partner for 16 years, pioneering HIV work through the local churches in Mumbai. They were recently recognised as best practice organisation by the United Nations. Timothy Gaikwad, Managing Director of IMCARES, visited Ireland in June 2009 to share about their work.

Project – To provide complete care and support to orphans and people living with AIDS

Key achievements

• Community-based care and support was provided for 30 orphans, including food, clothing & education.
• Regular counselling, home visits and care was given to 90 families affected by AIDS.
• Nutritional and material support was provided for 90 families affected by AIDS.
• 100 people living with AIDS received vocational training and received business start-up micro-loans.
• Two health clinics provided basic health services to people in the slums who would not have access to healthcare otherwise. Staff refer people to government health services when necessary.
• Five people dying from AIDS were cared for and bereavement counselling was provided to their families.
• Awareness and prevention education was conducted with 3,500 people living in slums using a variety of proven media such as street plays, films shows.
• Training was provided for 10 churches to respond to the poor and people living with AIDS in their communities.

Projects

Project Impact - transforming the lives of children orphaned by AIDS

Project completed – Dec 2009

Tearfund has been working with church partner IMCARES in Mumbai for more than 12 years and have seen incredible transformation during that time as the church has been mobilised to respond. They works in the poorest slums of Mumbai and focuses on supporting people with HIV, helping women who have been forced into prostitution and caring for orphaned children.

Key achievements

• Care and support for more than 30 orphans.
  Children orphaned by AIDS are provided care by extended families, church members and neighbours in the community and are living secure lives. Support provided includes food, clothing & education. Placing children in this type of foster care has proved much better for children than traditional orphanages.
• Regular counselling, home visits & care for 90 families with people living with AIDS.
  IMCARE staff make weekly visits to families providing counselling and ensuring that people with AIDS are taking their medicines. This provides an opportunity to the staff and local church members to share God’s love with them.
• Nutritional & material support for 90 families with people living with AIDS.
• Poor families are provided nutritional and educational support and other material help e.g. building materials & plastic sheeting to waterproof their homes
• Training for employment of 100 people living with AIDS & micro-loans
  This enables them to escape the poverty trap and become self-sufficient by starting small businesses, such as tailoring or hairdressing.
• Support to 2 health clinics
  Community health clinics provide basic health services to people in the slums who would not have access to healthcare otherwise. Staff refer people to government health services when necessary. For example, staff accompany new TB patients to treatment centres.
• Care of 5 people dying from AIDS
  IMCARES provides bereavement counselling to the family which includes preparedness for eventual death of PLHA. Special attention is given to children around the loss of their parents.
• Awareness and prevention education for 3,500 people living in slums
  Education takes place through a variety of proven media e.g. street plays, films shows. IMCARES has made two professional films on social issues involving HIV and AIDS and plans to make another in this project. This has potential to address lifestyle, discrimination and the root causes of other social problems in relation to HIV and AIDS, such as gender issues.
• Enabling 10 churches to respond to the poor and people living with AIDS in their communities.
  Capacity building of local churches will increase in this project period to lead to increased empowerment and involvement of the church pastors, leaders and members in transforming their communities.